File that

I am a master at compartmentalizing. 

It's a survival mechanism I adopted many years ago to help me deal with painful things.  People seem to find this puzzling that I can just shut off something painful and move on into other conversation.  However, it suits me well.

But how do you compartmentalize, seperate, two things which have been entangled from the start?  As you know, I've been having A LOT of physical pain lately, mainly due to fibromyalgia.  Severe traume often triggers the onset of this disease.  At the same time I was first experiencing the symptoms of this disease, I was also going through one of the worst relationship in my life.  Thus, they have been linked together in my mind.

As much as I believe I have done what is within my power to reconcile the situation and move past it, whenever I have a flare up my mind imediately goes back to where it all began.  I get angry all over again, and resent those people for the part they played in my disease.

Now I have been challenged to move beyond that.  To let those events be in the past, to seperate them from my disease and daily pain.  To declare one over, and proclaim a new page today and every day.  It surprised me that someone actually asked me to compartmentalize.  But what does that look like in this situation?  How can I unravel them when they seem like one of those braided ficus tress?  That would ruin the tree.  But maybe that's the whole point.